State Suspends Hancock County Probate Judge From Practicing Law
by Bill Trotter/Bangor Daily News
ELLSWORTH—Hancock County’s elected probate judge has been suspended from practicing law for a year.
Justice James Martemucci this week approved a petition by the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar to impose the suspension of William Blaisdell IV, who has held the part-time position of Hancock County probate judge since 2014. In addition to overseeing the county’s probate court, Blaisdell has continued to work privately as a lawyer.
The suspension comes on the heels of Blaisdell having been found in contempt of court in Waldo County — for the second time in just over a year — for failing to pay court-ordered child support and legal fees to his ex-wife.
Last August, after the first contempt-of-court order was issued against him in Waldo County, Blaisdell reached an agreement with the overseers board, which upholds standards of conduct for licensed lawyers in Maine. That agreement required Blaisdell to abide by certain conditions to prevent his law license from being suspended for a year.
That agreement was violated in February when District Court Judge Kate Dufour determined that Blaisdell, 55, was overdue in paying $17,000 in court-ordered child support and attorney’s fees to his ex-wife. Blaisdell and his ex-wife divorced in 2019.
Blaisdell’s repeated failures to abide by court orders “demonstrates that Blaisdell threatens imminent injury to the public and to the interests of justice, which justifies” the suspension, Martemucci wrote in the April 7 order.
In a separate April 7 order, Martemucci placed Blaisdell’s law practice in the receivership of attorneys Paul Driscoll and Daniel Pileggi, who will manage it while Blaisdell’s license is suspended.
It was not immediately clear Friday whether Blaisdell’s role as a probate judge will be affected by the overseers’ suspension. He was suspended from the bench last year for four months by the state’s top court after the same set of issues regarding his back taxes and child support led to a separate inquiry by the state Committee on Judicial Conduct.
In the event that Blaisdell is suspended from the bench again, the county can arrange to have another probate judge in Maine come to Hancock County to preside over cases, a county official said. Probate judges make rulings on family-related legal matters such as estates, guardianships, and name changes.
“In the event a sitting judge of probate is unable to serve, the Registrar may request an interchange Probate judge from another county,” said Juliette Wilbur, who serves as Hancock County’s elected registrar of probate. “Maine’s constitution and legal statutes cover this possibility.”
A little over a year ago, in March of 2024, Blaisdell was found in contempt of court by another Waldo County judge, Patricia Worth, who determined he owed his ex-wife nearly $50,000 in overdue child support and legal fees. The $17,000 he owed two months ago was in addition to the previous $50,000 he had not paid as of March 2024.
As part of the March 2024 contempt-of-court order, Worth wrote that Blaisdell had failed to comply with previous child support orders and that, at a prior hearing, he testified “that despite being a practicing Maine attorney and being the current sitting Hancock County Probate Judge, [he] has not filed his federal or state income taxes for 2022, 2021, 2020 and possibly for 2019.”
Court hearings and subsequent inquiries also revealed he neglected a criminal defense client who sat in jail for 11 months trying to get his bail reduced.
Among the requirements of the agreement that Blaisdell reached last summer with the overseers were that he file and make needed payments on his overdue tax returns within 90 days, and that he promptly and fully comply with all court orders, including those related to his divorce.
During a call with state officials last month about the overseers’ petition, Blaisdell acknowledged that he was not up to date on filing and making payments on his overdue tax returns from recent years, or with filing proof of that compliance with the Overseers of the Bar, according to an order signed last month by Martemucci.
In that order, Martemucci gave Blaisdell until April 1 to meet those requirements.
Blaisdell has served as Hancock County’s probate judge for the past decade. After first being elected to the post in 2014, he narrowly won reelection in 2018 against Lynne Williams, a lawyer from Bar Harbor who went on to serve in the Maine House of Representatives before her law license was suspended in January for alleged misconduct.
Blaisdell was reelected as probate judge without opposition in 2022. He will be up for reelection to the position next year, unless he resigns or is removed from office by the governor before then.
This story appears through a media partnership with the Bangor Daily News. This allows the BDN to use a certain amount of our stories a week and we can also choose to share that paper’s pieces.
Follow us (Bar Harbor Story) on Facebook. And as a reminder, you can easily view all our past stories and press releases here.
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here (about how you can give) or here (a direct link), which is the same as the button below.
If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.
We are meeting at the Northeast Harbor Library on Saturday from 9:30 until Noon. We want to recruit volunteers to ‘drive’ our tricycles and ride as ’safety riders’ on the Acadia Carriage roads where we offer free rides for non-ambulatory people.
https://www.mdiwheelers.org/
Thanks - call 852-9571 if you have ?’s
Dave Edson
Carrie, Can we get some coverage for the MDI Wheelers - please check our website. We will have a volunteer recruitment this coming Saturday and would like to do some PR.
Dave Edson